crossing each other at different intervals and different angles, but usually obliquely, by means of which blacks and grays of various intensity, or what is technically called color, were obtained. This was a process already in use in copperplate-engraving. In that art--the reverse of wood-engraving since the lines which are to give the impression on paper are incised into the metal instead of being left raised as in the wood-block--the engraver grooved out the crossing lines with the same facility and in the same way as the draughtsman draws them in a pen-and-ink sketch, the depth of color obtained depending in both cases on the relative closeness and fineness of the hatchings. In engraving in wood the task was much more difficult, and required greater nicety of skill, for, as in this case the crossing lines must be left in relief, the engraver was obliged to gouge out the minute diamond spaces between them. At first this was, probably, thought beyond the power of the workmen. The earliest woodcut in which these cross-hatchings appear is the frontispiece to Breydenbach’s Travels, published at Mayence in 1486, which is, perhaps, the finest wood-engraving of its time. In the Nuremberg chronicle this process was first extensively employed to obtain color, and thus this volume marks the beginning of that great school in wood-engraving which seeks its effects in black lines. [Illustration: FIG. 11.--The Dancing Deaths. From Schedel’s “Liber Chronicarum.” Nuremberg, 1493.] To describe the hundreds of illustrated books which the German printers published before the end of the century belongs to the bibliographer. Should any one turn to them, he would find in the cuts that they contain much diversity in character, but little in merit; he would meet at Bamberg, in the works printed by Pfister, whose Book of Fables, published 1461, is the first dated volume with woodcuts of figures, designs so rude that they are generally believed to have been hacked out by apprentices wholly destitute of training in the craft; he would notice in the books of Cologne the greater self-restraint and sense of proportion, in those of Augsburg the greater variety, vivacity, and vigor, in those of Nuremberg the greater exaggeration and grotesqueness. In the publications of some cities he would come upon the burning questions of that generation: the siege of Rhodes by the Turks, the wars of Charles the Bold against Switzerland, the martyrdom of John Huss; elsewhere he would see naïve conceptions of mediæval romance and chivalry, and not infrequently, as in the Boccaccio of Ulm, grossnesses not to be described; at Strasburg he would hardly recognize Horace and Virgil with their Teutonic features and barbaric garb; while at Mayence botanical works, which strangely mingle science, medicine, and superstition, would excite his wonder, and at Ulm military works would picture the forgotten engines of mediæval warfare; in the Netherlands,